You are the god of a toroidal world. The world is inhabited by creatures who reproduce (and mutate).
What you choose to do is up to you. There's no set goal. If you're feeling generous, help the creatures prosper and thrive. Or change the environment to guide their evolution in a particular direction. Or maybe you're a vengeful god and want to destroy all life.
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PLAY ONLINE:
Don't want to download a Java program? You can play over telnet:
telnet silt.stevelosh.com
It looks best with a dark terminal background. Also the server may be slow if a lot of people are playing. If you want it to be fast download the .jar :)
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Controls
The theme is "Two Button Controls", but I've bent that a little bit.
arrow keys to move your view of the world.
R - reset the world.
escape - quit the game.
Put your cursor over a creature to see their stats.
hjkl or wasd to move your cursor.
The world ticks along, but you can freeze time:
space - pause/unpause time.
Those are the basic controls. To actually interact with the world you have two options:
+ to make the world one degree hotter.
- to make the world one degree colder.
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Game Mechanics
Creatures have energy. They can spend it to stay alive, and get it by being near water or eating fruit.
Creatures have a body temperature that needs to stay near their ideal temperature. If the world is hotter or colder than they are, they need to spend energy to maintain their temperature (think sweating or burning calories to warm up).
Being in water helps creatures regulate their temperature. Some might evolve to take advantage of this.
Creatures have an insulation rating that affects how fast or slow they exchange heat to/from the environment (think different amounts of fur or skin).
Creatures can reproduce asexually if they have enough energy. Their offspring may have mutations (different colors, amounts of insulation, tendencies to walk in a certain direction, etc).
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Mysteries
There are eight mysterious objects scattered across the planet. What are they for?
This was really cool! I wasn't sure what exactly was going on but I liked the simulation and I liked seeing the different mutations. All of them had an ideal temperature of 0, can mutations create a different ideal temperature? Great job!
@Blake: A little intro screen or tutorial would be really nice, I agree. I just didn't have time to make it.
@Krafty: Right now the ideal temperature is always zero. I thought about making that mutatable but didn't have time to implement/playtest it. But if I poke around with the game more after judging it's one of the first things on the list that I want to try.
Innovative, interesting idea! This is probably my favorite interpretation of the 2-button theme.
It'd be nice to have some cool adjectives on the creatures, to see what traits they evolve. I was never able to figure out the mysterious artifacts, either...
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@Krafty: Right now the ideal temperature is always zero. I thought about making that mutatable but didn't have time to implement/playtest it. But if I poke around with the game more after judging it's one of the first things on the list that I want to try.
I just take too long to understand, but sound interesting!
It'd be nice to have some cool adjectives on the creatures, to see what traits they evolve. I was never able to figure out the mysterious artifacts, either...
Overall, interesting game!